Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Grease the Wheels vs Florida

The euphoria from breaking a 19-year playoff drought faded quickly as the Toronto Maple Leafs fell 4-2 to the Florida Panthers in Game 1 of their second round Stanley Cup playoff series.

Although they held a 36-28 edge in shots on goal, the Toronto Maple Leafs were unable to put enough pucks past Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to pull out a victory.

Despite relinquishing four goals, Toronto netminder Ilya Samsonov was solid, and made several spectacular saves to keep his team within striking range.

Unfortunately for the Leafs, Bobrovsky was better.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Grease the Wheels vs Florida

The story was similar with the Leafs other key players.  At times, the “core four plus one” were buzzing the Florida zone and peppering the Panthers net with quality shots.  The end result, however, showed zeros on the scoresheet for Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares, while Auston Matthews and Morgan Rielly tallied a single assist each.

Conversely, Florida’s top players came through in the clutch.  Carter Verhaeghe, Brandon Montour and Sam Bennett all scored, while Matthew Tkatchuk and Aleksander Barkov combined for five assists.

This was Florida’s fourth consecutive victory, after having beaten the Boston Bruins three games in a row to upset the President’s Trophy winners in round one.  The Panthers and their goalie tandem (the other being Alex Lyon) have been very streaky over the last two months.

In late March, Florida had lost four straight, Bobrovsky was struggling and the team was in danger of missing the playoffs.  Lyon then came in and the Panthers went on a six game winning streak, before dropping the last two regular season games.

Lyon started the first three playoff games against Boston, before Bobrovsky took the reins and hasn’t looked back.

If the Toronto Maple Leafs are to win this playoff series, they need to change things up, and do it quickly.  The Florida Panthers showed much more speed than the Tampa Bay Lightning, and Toronto’s defence had trouble adjusting.  Although Toronto finished ahead of Florida by 19 points in the regular season, make no mistake – this Panthers team is good.

How can the Leafs end Florida’s current winning streak and send them off in the other (losing) direction?  Get a bit greasy in the crease.  Get in Bobrovsky’s space, bump him, distract him, do what it takes to get him off his game.

Similarly, Toronto should benefit from the introduction of some rough stuff.  More penalties being called will slow down the game, and hopefully throw off the Panthers flow.

In the regular season, the Leafs powerplay and penalty kill percentages were 26.0 and 81.0, respectively, versus 22.8 and 75.9 for the Panthers (all stats from TSN.ca).  Despite going 0/4 on the powerplay in game 1, the Toronto Maple Leafs are likely to come out ahead on special teams play in this series.

The Florida Panthers outhit the Leafs 47-36 in Game 1, despite some heavy checks thrown by both Luke Schenn and Jake McCabe.  Toronto has to be more aggressive in this area, both to slow down the Florida forwards and also to help wear down the Panthers mobile defence corps.

The Toronto Maple Leafs looked much better in game 1 against Florida than they did in game 1 versus Tampa Bay.  Clearly having the playoff monkey off their back feels good.  But the result is the same, being down 1-0 in a short playoff series.

The sooner some strategic adjustments are made, the better the odds will be that the Leafs can take another step towards the ultimate prize.